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Bibliografía

The word bibliographia (βιβλιογραφία) was used by Greek writers in the first three
centuries AD to mean the copying of books by hand. In the 12th century, the word started
being used for "the intellectual activity of composing books". The 17th century then saw
the emergence of the modern meaning, that of description of books.[2] Currently, the field
of bibliography has expanded to include studies that consider the book as a material
object.[3] Bibliography, in its systematic pursuit of understanding the past and the present
through written and printed documents, describes a way and means of extracting
information from this material. Bibliographers are interested in comparing versions of
texts to each other rather than in interpreting their meaning or assessing their
significance.[4]
Field of studyEdit
Bibliography is a specialized aspect of library science (or library and information science,
LIS) and documentation science. It was established by a Belgian, named Paul Otlet (1868-
1944), who was the founder of the field of documentation, as a branch of the information
sciences, who wrote about "the science of bibliography."[5][6] However, there have recently
been voices claiming that "the bibliographical paradigm" is obsolete, and it is not today
common in LIS. A defense of the bibliographical paradigm was provided by Hjørland
(2007).[7] The quantitative study of bibliographies is known as bibliometrics, which is
today an influential subfield in LIS.[8][9]
BranchesEdit
Carter and Barker (2010) describe bibliography as a twofold scholarly discipline—the
organized listing of books (enumerative bibliography) and the systematic description of
books as physical objects (descriptive bibliography). These two distinct concepts and
practices have separate rationales and serve differing purposes. Innovators and originators
in the field include W. W. Greg, Fredson Bowers, Philip Gaskell, G. Thomas Tanselle.
Bowers (1949) refers to enumerative bibliography as a procedure that identifies books in
“specific collections or libraries,” in a specific discipline, by an author, printer, or period of
production (3). He refers to descriptive bibliography as the systematic description of a
book as a material or physical artifact. Analytical bibliography, the cornerstone of
descriptive bibliography, investigates the printing and all physical features of a book that
yield evidence establishing a book's history and transmission (Feather 10). It is the
preliminary phase of bibliographic description and provides the vocabulary, principles and
techniques of analysis that descriptive bibliographers apply and on which they base their
descriptive practice.

Descriptive bibliographers follow specific conventions and associated classification in their


description. Titles and title pages are transcribed in a quasi-facsimile style and
representation. Illustration, typeface, binding, paper, and all physical elements related to
identifying a book follow formulaic conventions, as Bowers established in his foundational
opus, The Principles of Bibliographic Description. The thought expressed in this book
expands substantively on W. W. Greg's groundbreaking theory that argued for the adoption
of formal bibliographic principles (Greg 29). Fundamentally, analytical bibliography is
concerned with objective, physical analysis and history of a book while descriptive
bibliography employs all data that analytical bibliography furnishes and then codifies it
with a view to identifying the ideal copy or form of a book that most nearly represents the
printer's initial conception and intention in printing.
In addition to viewing bibliographic study as being composed of four interdependent
approaches (enumerative, descriptive, analytical, and textual), Bowers notes two further
subcategories of research, namely historical bibliography and aesthetic
bibliography.[10] Both historical bibliography, which involves the investigation of printing
practices, tools, and related documents, and aesthetic bibliography, which examines the art
of designing type and books, are often employed by analytical bibliographers.
D. F. McKenzie extended previous notions of bibliography as set forth by W. W. Greg,
Bowers, Gaskell and Tanselle. He describes the nature of bibliography as "the discipline
that studies texts as recorded forms, and the processes of their transmission, including
their production and reception" (1999 12). This concept broadens the scope of
bibliography to include "non-book texts" and an accounting for their material form and
structure, as well as textual variations, technical and production processes that bring
sociocultural context and effects into play. McKenzie's perspective contextualizes textual
objects or artifacts with sociological and technical factors that have an effect on production,
transmission and, ultimately, ideal copy (2002 14). Bibliography, generally, concerns the
material conditions of books [as well as other texts] how they are designed, edited, printed,
circulated, reprinted, collected.[11]
Bibliographic works differ in the amount of detail depending on the purpose and can
generally be divided into two categories: enumerative bibliography (also called
compilative, reference or systematic), which results in an overview of publications in a
particular category and analytical or critical bibliography, which studies the production of
books.[12][13] In earlier times, bibliography mostly focused on books. Now, both categories
of bibliography cover works in other media including audio recordings, motion pictures
and videos, graphic objects, databases, CD-ROMs[14] and websites.
Enumerative bibliographyEdit

Bibliographer workplace in Russia

An enumerative bibliography is a systematic list of books and other works such


as journal articles. Bibliographies range from "works cited" lists at the end of books and
articles, to complete and independent publications. A notable example of a complete,
independent publication is Gow's, A. E. Housman: A Sketch, Together with a List of His
Classical Papers (1936). As separate works, they may be in bound volumes such as those
shown on the right, or computerized bibliographic databases. A library catalog, while not
referred to as a "bibliography," is bibliographic in nature. Bibliographical works are almost
always considered to be tertiary sources.
Enumerative bibliographies are based on a unifying principle such as creator, subject, date,
topic or other characteristic. An entry in an enumerative bibliography provides the core
elements of a text resource including a title, the creator(s), publication date and place of
publication. Belanger (1977) distinguishes an enumerative bibliography from other
bibliographic forms such as descriptive bibliography, analytical bibliography or textual
bibliography in that its function is to record and list, rather than describe a source in detail
or with any reference to the source's physical nature, materiality or textual transmission.
The enumerative list may be comprehensive or selective. One noted example would be
Tanselle's bibliography that exhaustively enumerates topics and sources related to all
forms of bibliography. A more common and particular instance of an enumerative
bibliography relates to specific sources used or considered in preparing a scholarly paper
or academic term paper.

Citation styles vary.

An entry for a book in a bibliography usually contains the following elements:

 creator(s)
 title
 place of publication
 publisher or printer
 date of publication

An entry for a journal or periodical article usually contains:

 creator(s)
 article title
 journal title
 volume
 pages
 date of publication

A bibliography may be arranged by author, topic, or some other scheme. Annotated


bibliographies give descriptions about how each source is useful to an author in
constructing a paper or argument. These descriptions, usually a few sentences long,
provide a summary of the source and describe its relevance. Reference management
software may be used to keep track of references and generate bibliographies as required.
Bibliographies differ from library catalogs by including only relevant items rather than all
items present in a particular library. However, the catalogs of some national
libraries effectively serve as national bibliographies [de], as the national libraries own
almost all their countries' publications.[15][16]
Descriptive bibliographyEdit
Fredson Bowers described and formulated a standardized practice of descriptive
bibliography in his Principles of Bibliographical Description (1949). Scholars to this day
treat Bowers' scholarly guide as authoritative. In this classic text, Bowers describes the
basic function of bibliography as, "[providing] sufficient data so that a reader may identify
the book described, understand the printing, and recognize the precise contents" (124).
Descriptive bibliographies as scholarly productEdit
Descriptive bibliographies as a scholarly product usually include information on the
following aspect of a given book as a material object:

 Format and Collation/Pagination Statement – a conventional, symbolic formula that describes the
book block in terms of sheets, folds, quires, signatures, and pages

According to Bowers (193), the format of a book is usually abbreviated in the collation
formula:
Broadsheet: I° or b.s. or bs.
Folio: 2° or fol.
Quarto: 4° or 4to or Q° or Q
Octavo: 8° or 8vo
Duodecimo: 12° or 12mo
Sexto-decimo: 16° or 16mo
Tricesimo-secundo: 32° or 32mo
Sexagesimo-quarto: 64° or 64mo
The collation, which follows the format, is the statement of the order and size of the
gatherings.
For example, a quarto that consists of the signed gatherings:
2 leaves signed A, 4 leaves signed B, 4 leaves signed C, and 2 leaves signed D
would be represented in the collation formula:
4°: A2B-C4D2
 Binding – a description of the binding techniques (generally for books printed after 1800)
 Title Page Transcription – a transcription of the title page, including rule lines and ornaments
 Contents – a listing of the contents (by section) in the book
 Paper – a description of the physical properties of the paper, including production process, an
account of chain-line measurements, and a description of watermarks (if present)
 Illustrations – a description of the illustrations found in the book, including printing process (e.g.
woodblock, intaglio, etc.), measurements, and locations in the text
 Presswork – miscellaneous details gleaned from the text about its production
 Copies Examined – an enumeration of the copies examined, including those copies' location (i.e.
belonging to which library or collector)

Analytical bibliographyEdit
This branch of the bibliographic discipline examines the material features of a textual
artifact – such as type, ink, paper, imposition, format, impressions and states of a book – to
essentially recreate the conditions of its production. Analytical bibliography often uses
collateral evidence – such as general printing practices, trends in format, responses and
non-responses to design, etc. – to scrutinize the historical conventions and influences
underlying the physical appearance of a text. The bibliographer utilizes knowledge gained
from the investigation of physical evidence in the form of a descriptive bibliography or
textual bibliography.[17] Descriptive bibliography is the close examination and cataloging of
a text as a physical object, recording its size, format, binding, and so on, while textual
bibliography (or textual criticism) identifies variations – and the aetiology of variations – in
a text with a view to determining "the establishment of the most correct form of [a] text
(Bowers 498[1]).
BibliographersEdit

Paul Otlet, to work in an office built at his home following the closure of the Palais Mondial in June 1937

A bibliographer is a person who describes and lists books and other publications, with
particular attention to such characteristics as authorship, publication date, edition,
typography, etc. A person who limits such efforts to a specific field or discipline is a subject
bibliographer."[18]
A bibliographer, in the technical meaning of the word, is anyone who writes about books.
But the accepted meaning since at least the 18th century is a person who attempts a
comprehensive account—sometimes just a list, sometimes a fuller reckoning—of the books
written on a particular subject. In the present, bibliography is no longer a career, generally
speaking; bibliographies tend to be written on highly specific subjects and by specialists in
the field.

The term bibliographer is sometimes—in particular subject bibliographer—today used


about certain roles performed in libraries[19] and bibliographic databases.
One of the first bibliographers was Conrad Gessner who sought to list all books printed in
Latin, Greek and Hebrew in Bibliotheca Universalis (1545).
Non-book materialEdit
Systematic lists of media other than books can be referred to with terms formed
analogously to bibliography:
 Discography – recorded music
 Filmography – films
 Webography (or webliography) – websites (the first use of the word "webliography" recorded in
the Oxford English Dictionary dates from June 1995)

Arachniography is a term coined by NASA research historian Andrew J. Butrica, which


means a reference list of URLs about a particular subject. It is equivalent to a bibliography
in a book. The name derives from arachne in reference to a spider and its web.[20][21]
See alsoEdit
 Bibliographic index
 Citation
 Citation creator
 History of books – Aspect of history
 Ibid. / Op cit
 Indexing and abstracting service
 ISO 690 – ISO standard for bibliographic referencing, an international standard for bibliographic
referencing
 List of books (in Wikipedia)
 Metabibliography (bibliography of bibliographies)
 Reference table
 Legal bibliography
 Style guide
 Textual scholarship

References

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